private WILL THIS EARTH BE GOOD TO YOU? — moorblossom

[WEASELCLAW]

When he summons Moorblossom to the Place of No Stars, it is not to talk, to parry. His eldest daughter, she of the midnight pelt and the willowy limbs, had been the first to turn against Sootstar and her loyalists. He remembers licking her dark fur clean of afterbith, remembers the way the sun had gleamed against her as she’d taken her first stumbling steps out into the moor she’d been named for, and his heart clenches against itself.

When he sees her now, lost amidst a world of darkness, he unsheathes his claws. It hurts him to imagine drawing his nails across her perfect pelt, across the body Sootstar had carried inside of her for two moons, but he knows his daughter has betrayed her mother. Has betrayed him.

She is nothing to them any longer.

Weaselclaw leaps from the shadows, and he attempts to draw his claws along Moorblossom’s right flank.

, ”​

​

 

[MOORBLOSSOM]

Awakening does not come with sleep-addled eyes and a happy yawn. Moorblossom is instead plucked from her respite and plunged into awareness, the transition so sudden that she blinks against disorientation. She's offered a moment to adjust, just a moment, a solitary heartbeat, before the rhythm in her chest ticks toward a demanding pace.

This isn't home. This isn't a place at all, it's the vaguest semblance of something only defined by emptiness. No scents, no sounds, no warmth, just a space she exists in with a hushed cadence. No stars, either.

Where is she? What'd brought her to this dreamscape? Moorblossom does not wear anxiety well; her lissom form is used to curling away from conflict, her ears flattened and her tail tucked against her thigh. But there is no retreat to be had here. Her legs ache to walk, just to see if it'll return her to the nest she'd sworn she was tucked into so gently only a moment before.

She gathers her bearings with a sigh of resignation, bowing her head. In the split second that followed, a jarring eruption of agony. "AAH!!" the she-cat shrieks, writhing against the claws which rent her haunch from one end to the other. Tears sting her eyes. Moorblossom spins, stumbles from the onslaught, struggling to escape the phantom threat. She doesn't make it far before her blood gushes over her hind legs and weakens her, too fast, faster even than the pain itself.

Bleeding.

She's bleeding.

She needs to wake up, and right now.

Ink-black limbs pivot. A shape rises like smoke from the void, tall and broad—a primal fear floods through her veins, poised to unleash a torrent of panic, when she recognises him. "D-Dad?" she hyperventilates, her gaze raking over a pelt she has not seen for seasons. "What- what are you doing?! Please, don't hurt me!" ​